Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities

REVIEW

UNEVEN INNOVATION: THE WORK OF SMART CITIES

by Jennifer Clark

Review by Joungwon Kwon

JOUNGWON is a third-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. With a statistics and English literature background, she received her MA in computational media at Duke University. Her academic interests include visualizations in plans, urban technology, and sustainable cities. She has been part of Carolina Planning Journal since 2019.

Columbia University PRress. 2020.

In the past decade, smart cities have been a buzzword with an unclear definition. Jennifer Clark’s Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities disentangles the concepts of smart cities projects by reviewing technology problems, urban entrepreneurialism, and the new element of urban innovation networks. Clark offers a historical review of cities and the identifies of how smart cities are different, which serves as a framework to analyze smart cities. Clark also critiques the present patterns of smart cities and proposes specific recommendations and policy solutions for smart cities projects. Clark provides a foundation for people to think about smart cities project as an urban policy project instead of a technology project.

While smart cities are known as using technologies to create livable cities, Clark defines the fuzzy concept of the smart cities projects as “technology diffusion challenge operating in a dynamic and contested space between the public and the private sector” (xii). With the definition, the author introduces an alternative framework for understanding smart cities projects instead of the common misconception that smart cities projects are only about technology. In order to comprehend the framework, Clark illustrates five premises. The first premise is that cities have been and continue to be under uneven innovation. It is essential to acknowledge that, currently, cities have different geographical advantages, and technology expedites the uneven development of cities. The smart cities projects need to intentionally design cities that can mitigate inequalities instead of defaulting to the idea that smart cities will magically fix cities’ problems. The second premise is that tech firms exploit and maintain uneven innovation. While tech firms offer services and infrastructures to cities, cities provide the abundant locational data. Tech firms carefully select the cities that will offer advantage for their businesses such as cities with less regulations. Although cities need the services and infrastructures, I believe this premise shows that cities have the upper hand to form the future smart cities because the cities control and collect the data. The third premise is that the smart cities projects are usually created quickly with fast policies. The expedited policy process of the projects do not leave much room for evaluation or validation. The fourth premise is that “The smart cities project exacerbates and amplifies precarious work, embedding labor flexibility in the production and operations of the built environment” (p. 14). With the technology’s infrastructure and connectivity, the projects blurs the line between employer and employee, making employee rights ambiguous, which perpetuates problems. The last premise is that the revenue model for collecting and selling the data is unclear. One of the main advantages of smart cities is how data is collected, integrated, and used. However, the neighborhood scale’s long term cost benefit is difficult to assess and the model needs a clear structure. These five premises help readers understand Clark’s arguments in the book and connect with the historical facts of cities.

The smart cities projects have many problems—all of which Clark ultimately ties back to preexisting urban problems, which is uneven development. The diffusion of existing problems of uneven development and technology are not helping but exacerbating the fact. One of the main takeaways from the book is to “stop reproducing uneven development patterns through technology solutions” (p. 216).

Clark argues that cities incorporating smart cities projects need to stop the continuous loop of uneven innovation. Cities cannot rely on the smart cities projects to bring economic benefits without the problems of producing and increasing inequalities because the problems of privatization in cities and economic growth already exist. Cities can solve the problems with the right urban policies to solve the uneven development and create equitable cities.

Uneven Innovation’s organization allows the readers to understand Clark’s arguments effortlessly. The book provides the history of urban policies, the smart cities projects’ similarities and distinctions from technology sectors, interjurisdictional competition, history of urban entrepreneurialism, and recommendations for the smart cities book offers academics a closure of questions on the methodology. Clark’s carefully thought structure allows readers to understand the history and problems of smart cities and view smart cities as an ongoing urban problem. Moreover, the epilogue also serves a great purpose of providing the methods to her findings and arguments.

Although it is not an academic article, having a part of the book dedicated to methods at the end of the book offers academics a closure of questions on the methodology. In the book’s conclusion, Clark provides three recommendations—invest in embedding innovation capacity within city government, create urban policies to use data advantageously while citizen rights to data are considered, and redesign and expand the participatory planning practices with new technologies. The recommendations are brief but valuable and comprehensible with the previous chapters. She also acknowledges that she did not offer concrete recommendations for all smart cities’ problems. Even if the recommendations may be incomplete, readers will benefit from Clark’s other solutions to the smart cities projects.

Future editions should consider including case studies, such as specific solutions to a particular city. Another point that will be useful for future editions will be the example of the Sidewalk Toronto project, a collaborative smart cities project between Toronto and Google. In May 2020, Sidewalk Labs canceled Toronto’s smart city project. The book was published before the cancellation. Linking the argument of smart cities’ slow implementation due to the lack of money with the project’s cancellation will be interesting.

Clark’s thorough analysis and carefully crafted organization of the book enable readers to understand the problems of smart cities as urban policies instead of a new problem that cities have never faced in the past. Instead of critiquing existing smart cities projects, Clark critiques policies that create uneven development. Understanding the uneven development as a preexisting problem of cities helps identify the smart cities’ problems to cities. Often the problems of smart cities seem unique and challenging to solve. However, Clark encourages readers to understand smart cities in a broader framework, which would allow them to address smart cities problems.

In 2021, Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities was awarded the Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award. Clark’s thorough analysis of the smart cities projects and brief recommendation will be a great addition not only to urban analytic courses but also to urban history courses in planning departments. This book will be a fascinating and informative read to anyone who is interested in understanding the problems of past and future cities. Policy makers and tech-sector engineers involved in city-scale projects will also benefit from reading the book to the very end, where recommendations are presented.